Snook.ca

Launching FONTSMACK

FONTSMACK is a repository of Macromedia Flash files (SWFs) that you can easily drop into your sIFR-enabled site.

After registering the domain name on Monday night, doing the design on Tuesday, and the programming on Wednesday, it's live. FONTSMACK is an idea I had to offer an easy way to add sIFR to your site.

It's a little sparse at the moment as I just wanted to get everything up but over the next few days, expect to see a number of new features such as search and upload. You'll also be able to narrow down by company or font-style. I'll also be adding RSS feeds for general site news and for new fonts. In the meantime, take a look through and let me know what you think.

I think the main difference between these sIFR files and any other Flash file that embeds a font is that you are explicitly giving people a way to use commercial available fonts in their creative projects (web pages) without owning that font. This isn't exactly your<,/em> problem -- it's sort of a hole in sIFR. But, by distributing these Flash files you are kind of promoting what could be deemed piracy of fonts.

Most Flash files do not provide people who download them a way to re-use the embedded fonts in creative projects.

Jeff: It's not even really a hole in sIFR but a hole in the licensing from the foundries. In doing some research (thanks Philippe), I've discovered the companies such as Adobe and Font Bureau specifically allow embedding fonts. The link Philippe gave for ITC specifically requires a different license.

In retrospect, if/when I do open things back up for commercial fonts, I'll likely not offer the ability for users to upload fonts due to my inability to police whether those who've uploaded a font actually own the license for it.

"Licensee is not permitted to create or distribute to unlicensed parties documents or graphics containing an embedded copy of the Font Software containing a facsimile of the entire or substantially all of the character set of the typeface design embodied in the Font Software."

Certainly wasn't calling you an amateur. :) That site made the rounds as a place to get good "free" fonts and many of the fonts it was distributing were commercial. I'm not sure why the other designers that linked it didn't pick up on this, but if you're not a type nerd, it would have been hard to tell the difference, I guess.

Great idea! As for the legal issues, users uploading their Flash source files including the commercial fonts maybe illegal. However, if the licensing of those fonts was made public for Font Smack, it would be much more convenient for everybody. Good luck!

I think the bottom line is that no font foundry's license is going to have explicit inclusions for a technology such as sIFR. They mention Flash, sure, but they're thinking of traditional Flash usage -- in which people downloading the Flash file can't use it to create sites with their fonts despite not having a license.

Becuase the licenses won't specifically outlaw such a usage (such a thing didn't exist until sIFR), you might get away with it for a while, but I can almost guarantee the foundries will revise their licenses or send you cease and desist letters.

The bottom line is that this may not break the letter of their law, but it certainly breaks the spirit of it.

Hey Jonathan, nice idea. Unfortunately you're not the first, but a nice idea none the less :)

Something you might want to think about when you get the licensing issues solved is that a next version of sIFR will probably require you to re-export your fonts. You might want to keep that in mind when filling the site with fonts...

Providing a method of downloading sIFR files is such an excellent idea, even if it is only freely available fonts.

It would be cool if someone made a tool that would allow you to upload a font file and then dynamically create a sIFR for only that user to download (because it might get around copyright issues, since they own the font and the server isn't using it.) I'm not sure if there's a GD-like library for working with flfash though, so I don't know how feasible this would be.